He said the closure had left many families anxious as they waited for redundancy payments to cover mortgages and household bills.<\/p>\n
\u201cWithout that surety, they don\u2019t know what the heck is happening.\u201d<\/p>\n
Waikato Herald approached Carter Holt Harvey for comment.<\/p>\n
Talking to RNZ\u2019s Evie Richardson, plywood plant worker and father of five, Gilbert Sydney said he had been among those being made redundant from Kinleith Mill recently, but had then found work at the plywood mill, where he had been for only four weeks.<\/p>\n
\u201cDouble-banger, it\u2019s a double-banger but I\u2019ve always felt as you just gotta move on with life, you can\u2019t be in the dumps for too long, especially when you\u2019ve got family,\u201d Sydney told RNZ.<\/p>\n
Although he was determined to stay in Tokoroa, Sydney worried whether his kids would have a future in the town.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think if these two places like fully shut, nah … I don\u2019t think there\u2019s a future here for them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Middlemiss told the Waikato Herald that while the closure was very unfortunate, he still had hope for Tokoroa and the wider South Waikato district.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are several things happening that are really great … but we\u2019ve got to come up with a plan,\u201d Middlemiss said.<\/p>\n
Middlemiss said South Waikato needed to attract new businesses and retain its workforce as workers who left for Australia often did not return until retirement.<\/p>\n
Petley said the council would keep advocating for the workers and help them navigate redundancies through Project Phoenix.<\/p>\n
There were training and employment opportunities, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe timing hasn\u2019t been perfect, but we have positive things going on,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are a long way from being a ghost town.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said there were \u201ca lot of [work] options\u201d in the area \u201conce infrastructure work is complete\u201d.<\/p>\n
Petley said the closure of Kinleith Mill, along with Carter Holt Harvey\u2019s decision, signalled a shift away from timber and towards new industries.<\/p>\n
He said one example was the new Better Eggs facility in Putaruru, which marked its sod-turning this week.<\/p>\n
The 8ha first stage of the development will include a new packing, processing, warehouse and distribution facility.<\/p>\n
Final consenting requirements are being worked through before earthworks begin by the end of the year.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Additional reporting by Evie Richardson of RNZ<\/p>\n
Tom Eley is a multimedia journalist at the Waikato Herald. He previously worked for the Weekend Sun and Sunlive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He said the closure had left many families anxious as they waited for redundancy payments to cover mortgages…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":55902,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[34284,74,4057,138,2220,651,17163,1656,2223,2222,2221,3112,7242,5342,7243,111,139,12885,69,4885,25688,42569,1240,61,17160,1524,4478,6730],"class_list":["post-55901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-adds","tag-after","tag-behind","tag-business","tag-carter","tag-close","tag-closure","tag-company","tag-confirmed","tag-harvey","tag-holt","tag-job","tag-kinleith","tag-losses","tag-mill","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-november","tag-nz","tag-plant","tag-plywood","tag-rallied","tag-south","tag-to","tag-tokoroa","tag-waikato","tag-workers","tag-would"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55901\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}